Vintage Story: First Week Survival Guide
Checked on 14 October 2026 against the Vintage Story 1.22.7 game files and its in-game handbook.
Your first week in Vintage Story decides how comfortable the first winter will be. This plan follows the order the game's own Starter Survival Guide and Progression Guide recommend, with the exact recipes from the game files. Settings below are the defaults of the Standard playstyle; a server can change them.
Day 1: Immediate Priorities
Tools
- Knap: pick up flint or loose stones of a hard rock (chert, granite, andesite, basalt, obsidian or peridotite). With 2 in hand, crouch (Shift) and right click the ground to place one and start knapping. You can knap knife blades, axe, hoe, shovel and spear heads, and arrowheads.
- Assemble: each head plus a stick on the crafting grid makes the tool (knife, axe, spear and so on). Knap a knife and an axe first.
- No stone pickaxe: there is none. Your first pickaxe is copper (Day 6 and 7 below).
- A weapon: a spear (spear head plus stick) or a wooden club, which is a log with your knife on the grid (the knife is not used up).
Fire and light
- Cut tall grass with the knife to collect dry grass.
- A firestarter is 1 dry grass and 2 sticks.
- Place dry grass on the ground, add 4 firewood, and hold right click on it with the firestarter until it lights. Our early game guide has the timings and the pit kiln.
- A torch is 2 dry grass and 1 stick; light it at the fire.
Carrying more
You start with 10 inventory slots and can carry up to 4 baskets or other containers on top. A hand basket takes 10 cattail tops (or papyrus tops), which you cut from reeds. The same tops also make rope: 6 cattail tops, or 3 sections of wild vine, give 1 rope, so you do not need flax for rope.
Food and shelter
- Food: berries from bushes are the easy start, hunting the bigger one, and cooked cattail roots the emergency food. Note wild crops as you pass them; they become your farm.
- Shelter: build something small before night. The handbook's stone age materials are cob, soil, packed dirt, cobblestone from ruins and logs.
- Bed: a hay bed is 3 hay bales in a row, and a hay bale is 8 dry grass, so 24 dry grass in all. Sleeping passes the night; it does not set your respawn point.
Critical: set a respawn point with a temporal gear, not a bed. Hold right click with a temporal gear for about 3.5 seconds and it shatters into a returning point where you stand. On the Standard playstyle that point works for 20 respawns; on Wilderness Survival for 3, and on Homo sapiens gears cannot set one at all. Without it you respawn near the world spawn. When you die on Standard you drop your inventory where you fell, and dropped items vanish after 10 minutes, so plan the trip back. Standard also has no grace timer: drifters can appear in the dark from the first day (the Exploration playstyle waits 5 days and keeps your inventory on death). Temporal gears come from ruins and from drifters; see our temporal stability guide.
Day 2-3: Resource Gathering
Clay is the next step: it gives you storage vessels, cooking pots and bowls, and later the crucible and tool molds for copper. Red clay can turn up wherever there is soil and enough rain, blue clay only at low elevations. Shape it with clay forming and fire it in a pit kiln, both covered in the early game guide.
What the first week actually costs
| Goal | What it takes |
|---|---|
| Firestarter | 1 dry grass, 2 sticks |
| Firepit | Dry grass on the ground and 4 firewood |
| Hand basket | 10 cattail or papyrus tops |
| Rope | 6 cattail or papyrus tops, or 3 wild vine sections |
| Hay bed | 3 hay bales (24 dry grass) |
| Pit kiln firing | 10 dry grass, 8 sticks and 4 firewood (8 for a storage vessel) |
| Copper pickaxe and hammer | 40 copper nuggets, charcoal, a crucible and two fired molds |
Day 4-5: Agriculture Setup
Starting Your Farm
- Seeds: harvest the wild crops you noted on Day 1.
- Till: use a hoe (knapped hoe head plus stick) on soil.
- Water: water within 3 blocks on the same level keeps farmland moist, wettest right next to it.
- Soil: better soil grows faster; see the fertility table in our agriculture guide.
Crop Priority
| Crop | Days to ripen at full speed | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Turnip | 7 | The fastest food crop |
| Carrot | 9 | Quick vegetable, uses a different nutrient than turnips |
| Spelt or rye | 16 | Grain for flour and bread (there is no wheat in Vintage Story) |
| Flax | 16 | Fibers for flax twine (4 fibers each), linen and gambeson armor |
Days assume the default 9 day months. Rotate crops that use different nutrients, as the agriculture guide explains.
Day 6-7: Copper Age Transition
Finding Copper
- Surface nuggets: loose copper nuggets on the ground, which also mark a deposit underneath.
- Other sources: cracked vessels in ruins, panning sand and gravel, and traders.
- How much: 40 nuggets for a pickaxe and a hammer, the handbook's suggested first tools.
- Smelting: melt the nuggets in a crucible over a firepit burning charcoal, then pour into fired clay molds. Our metallurgy guide covers temperatures and molds.
First Copper Tools
Craft in this order:
- Copper pickaxe: mines copper ore.
- Copper hammer: crushes that ore into nuggets you can smelt, and later works metal on an anvil.
- Prospecting pick: finds the underground ores the bronze age needs.
- Copper axe and knife: faster wood and harvesting.
Survival Tips
Food Management
- Once you have clay, cook meals in a pot; the handbook calls it the way to greatly improve your nutrition.
- Store food in a cool cellar and sealed crocks; see our food preservation guide.
Temperature & Weather
- On standard worlds you have about 70 in-game days before the cold season, when crops stop growing, wild animals yield less meat, and you can suffer from the cold.
- Stock preserved food and keep animals before then (our animal husbandry guide covers taming and breeding).
Combat Basics
- A spear or wooden club is the stone age weapon, plus improvised armor for very basic protection.
- Wolves and bears are dangerous early; avoid fights you do not need.
Week 1 Goals Checklist
- Knife, axe, hoe and a spear or club
- A firepit, torches and a small shelter with a hay bed
- A respawn point set with a temporal gear
- Baskets for more carrying space
- Fired pottery: storage vessels, a cooking pot, a crucible and molds
- A first field of turnips, carrots, grain and flax next to water
- 40 copper nuggets and charcoal for the copper pickaxe and hammer
Common Beginner Mistakes
| Mistake | Why It's Bad | How to Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Trusting a bed to set your spawn | Beds only pass the night; you respawn near the world spawn | Shatter a temporal gear where you want to respawn |
| Dying far from your gear | Standard drops your inventory, and dropped items vanish after 10 minutes | Go back quickly, or play Exploration, which keeps your inventory |
| Looking for a stone pickaxe | There is none; copper ore needs a copper pickaxe | Collect 40 copper nuggets for a pickaxe and hammer |
| Ignoring winter | After about 70 days crops stop and animals give less meat | Preserve food and keep animals well before then |
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